That Music List

Saturday, 31 October 2026

LIST 278 - 31/10/2026

(Gourock Outdoor Pool, as *not* featured in Lido, Darren Hayman's album dedicated to outdoor swimming pools. Maybe in a future sequel? It does have at least one music connection already, being the setting for the video of F.O. Machete's cover of Olivia Newton-John's Physical, q.v. List #77. Picture taken on 28/05/2026 is the author's own)

Hello again,

"Shouldn't Darren Hayman have won some sort of award by now?", Stewart Lee mused in The Sunday Times back in 2012, further dubbing him "the thinking person's indie-pop legend and unaccredited national treasure". Both true.

An extraordinarily wide, rich, thoughtful, intelligent back catalogue added to over the course of more than three decades now has certainly garnered fewer gongs than the critical acclaim afforded to most of it would seemingly justify, with only a Hardest Working Musician award conferred by the Association of Independent Music in 2016 immediately springing to mind.

It would be an act of some hubris on my part to suggest that getting the A Session of Sorts treatment in this week's List goes any way at all towards redressing the balance; more still to claim that the four tracks I've selected here come remotely close to covering every musical or thematic angle of Darren's work. Nevertheless, it's been a pleasure to revisit a number of his albums and singles to finalise a choice of three to go with something from the newly released I'm Your Team long-player.

Note "newly released" as opposed to "new", I'm Your Team having been recorded in its entirety back in 2022 and only now seeing the light. It's easy to imagine there'd been little free time in his schedule to have put it out before now.

Just like the TV Themes EP released only a month prior as The French (thus temporarily reactivating one of Darren's longer standing post-Hefner projects), the new album is largely a vintage synthesizer-led affair - the once ubiquitous Yamaha DX7 predominates.

That's probably about as much of a concept as can be found in I'm Your Team, but it would be remiss to go this entire feature without referencing any of Darren's well-researched yet precisely and economically executed subject-driven collections.

The aforementioned AIM award acknowledged the work undertaken for his Thankful Villages project - not just writing a song about each of the 55 villages to suffer zero losses in World War I and releasing them across three albums, but making a film for each also. Either side of that, it's possible to find albums each dedicated to one of The English Civil War, the works of William Morris, every man to have walked on the moon, the Essex Witch Trials and more besides. He'd dot up in the specialist round of Mastermind.

I couldn't not include something from my favourite Darren Hayman themed album of them all, 2012's delightful and evocative instrumental collection Lido. Fourteen songs, each inspired by one of Britain's open-air swimming pools, replete with field recordings where practicable.

Living as close as I do to (and a user of) one pool not covered, namely Hathersage Pool in the Peak District, I'd like to assume the way to a sequel to Lido some day isn't permanently closed. How Darren would represent by instrumentation only the smell of the village's heavenly chippy, located conveniently few minutes' walk from the pool, might be an interesting challenge.

***

(The Sunbathers - Indietracks Festival, 28/07/2019. Pictures are author's own)

From swimmers to sunbathers, regular readers will remember that the A Loved Album on List #262 from mid July was The Sunbathers' 2018 debut, A Weekend Away With... To this day it remains the newest album to receive such treatment.

The suggestions back in the summer that a long-awaited follow-up may almost be upon us have proven well founded, Answers on a Postcard appearing as September became October on Jenny's Feather Factory, a newish Birmingham imprint run by TV and radio presenter, journalist and consumer champion Adrian Goldberg. Poignantly, the label takes its name from the factory the eponymous Jenny, Adrian's great-aunt and a Holocaust victim, had run in Berlin in happier times.

I'm sure Adrian must find releasing gorgeous indiepop a nice diversion from the day job of exposing sharp practices on the high street or bemoaning football teams' financial impropriety; and releases to date, including a couple from Mighty Mighty alumni The Leaking Machine, speak well of a label so far dedicated entirely to produce from Midlands-based performers.

Answers on a Postcard is self-described on The Sunbathers' Bandcamp presence as "beautiful, moving pop songs". This is no idle boast. That's exactly what it is.

The musical and lyrical influences of yore - The Marine Girls of this world - are still present and correct, but right from the opener Belonging it's evident that the duo's sound has developed into something a bit fuller and more rounded than before. Subtly, mark you, with all twelve tracks still as light, spacious and understated as any from their back catalogue, but perceptibly so nonetheless.

That's perhaps most noticeable in Julie Robinson's vocals. I do love a dual layered vocal when done right, for example to amplify ever so delicately the world-weariness and coping strategies of Make a Deal with the City by East River Pipe. Similarly double layered for this sophomore effort, Julie's delivery nevertheless loses none of its fragility, warmth, pointedness, concern, joy, yearning, or whatever else each song in turn requires, additionally holding its own comfortably set against the expanded instrumentation, from piano to vibraslap.

Rare are the songs which move me to the point of tears despite me having nothing personally invested in their protagonists. Be Selfish by The Montgolfier Brothers, certainly. A number of tracks from the first two Trembling Blue Stars albums, absolutely. Some of Nev Clay's, too, from Demons at the end of last century all the way up to I Flew a Flag this year.

You can add more than one song from Answers on a Postcard to that list. Not necessarily exactly the same songs each time, but always Devotion, which I think I must consider The Sunbathers' career highlight to this point. A powerful piece concerning coercive control in a relationship, given an extra atmosphere of unease and discomfort by the uncommon five-four time signature and a piano accompaniment with just the right measure of jar and fraction of discordance.

Devotion is a startling piece of work, and I have no hesitation in sharing it with you this week. It will not be, you'll doubtless have guessed, the only track from the album that will feature in a List in the immediate to short term, either.

A rumination on the often difficult path from being lovers to friends, and for me another highlight among a strong collection overall, it wouldn't surprise were I to learn that Common Ground resonates personally with many who hear it. Whether that has ever included myself, you'll have to guess.

(The Sunbathers - Indietracks Festival, 28/07/2019. Picture is author's own)

***

With the release yesterday of new long-player Égrégore, this feels like the perfect moment to do a Then and Now feature on Mylène Farmer, for over four decades now the forever reinventing, medium-straddling, restlessly creative and staggeringly successful (as in, 26 number one singles and 18 number one albums levels of successful) queen of French pop music.

Returning to a theme from last week of just not getting an act until many years after first contact with their work (c.f. Cardiacs), I would have heard Mylène for the first time in August 1991, when the Pet Shop Boys played Désenchantée - then only recently deposed from the top spot in the French hit parade, and to this day still the biggest-selling single by a French female artist in France - during a week-long standing in for Simon Bates on BBC Radio 1.

I was... interested up to a point in Désenchantée (a track originally informed by student demonstrations in France against class sizes, etc. - some things never change), but ultimately not won over there and then, finding it too labyrinthine and elongated to be A Pop Single. Fast forward a decade and a few plays of a then girlfriend's copy of it, I was loving it for exactly the same reasons.

Je suis désolé, Mylène - and Neil and Chris, too, for interpreting your love of the single as borne of archness rather than heartfelt enthusiasm, the berk that I am. In actual fact, when Neil would have a top ten hit with Electronic's Disappointed a year later, he freely admitted he derived much of its inspiration from this stunning source material.

Whilst C'est à qui le tour, the latest album's official lead but de facto second single, feels almost conventional by Mylène's standards as a sub-three minute verse-chorus-verse electropop track (the sexually desolate lyrics notwithstanding), much else about Égrégore and its promotion is characteristically ambitious. The tribute to David Lynch. The borrowing from esoteric terminology. A cast of star producers from DJ Snake to Moby. And, not least, a 65-minute video-cum-concert-cum-documentary accompaniment with a small-scale theatre release.

Snatches from that film, and/or compilations of other promotional video highlights lifted from Mylène's extensive career portfolio, accompany some of the available YouTube clips for C'est à qui le tour. You'll forgive me, however, if I've gone instead for plainer alternatives, remaining mindful that the transgressive nature of a number of her videos - from the concentration camp setting of the extended Désenchantée promo to the tribute to Olivier de Sagazan's disturbing clayface art in À l'ombre - has the potential to be triggering.

***

Among this week's other many treats, you may particularly also like:

Other new or at least not ancient material from Dog Unit, The Sewing Club, Moses Boyd ft SHANTÈH and Dexys Midnight Runners. The last named can be added to the list of father-son relationship songs that I reckon are miles better than The Living Years - see also Golden Goal by Pete Green and Come Here My Daddy by XTC.

A brief chance to relive Bette Davis & the Balconettes, who still count as the edgiest, most intimidating proposition I've ever come across in four decades of enjoying indiepop. Fizzy, aggressive, shouty (but unarguably great) tunes performed by a mob with the collective disposition of a buzzsaw, there are probably still a number of late-1990s Mancunian gig-goers who twitch and convulse at the recollection of being practically decapitated by one of Tracey Rees's violently hurled bass guitars.

Dave Stewart. No, not that one. The interesting one, of Hatfield & The North, Egg and It's My Party fame. Although gaining most commercial traction at the start of the 1980s once reinterpreting 1960s classics as leftfield synth tracks, the ability to pen a solid pop song had far from deserted him by then; hence the b-side of What Becomes of the Brokenhearted included here.

Björk, seen here in her role as the visually compromised Selma in Lars von Trier's polarising but ultimately Palme d'Or-winning tragedy musical Dancer in the Dark from 2000. The Thom Yorke duet from the same movie soundtrack is the one that garners the most airplay to this day, but, whisper it, I've always preferred the sheer ambition of Cvalda, a perfect union of the song and dance energy of It's Oh So Quiet and Mark Bell's subtle machine clanks (actual machines this time, too, considering the factory floor upon which Selma and colleagues break into song). Uploading this one returned some bittersweet memories, in truth, Dancer in the Dark being among those I'd have seen at the big screen film nights semi-regularly put on at the Futurist Theatre in Scarborough around the turn of the century. The theatre is no longer there, and neither, no less sadly, are some of my then town library colleagues with whom I'd have watched it.

Still on films, a quite literally electrifying performance from the recently departed Gerrit Graham, taken from his performance as Beef in Phantom of the Paradise, Brian de Palma's 1974 glam-rock retelling of Faust via The Picture of Dorian Gray. Only a year younger than the stage original of The Rocky Horror Show, but therefore also released a year before that one's film version, Phantom of the Paradise feels to me as if it's lived in that cult juggernaut's shadow for much of its existence but is a fine piece of work in its own right. Funny, grisly, parodic, subversive, satirical and camp, do seek it out and give it a try if you haven't already.

The late Victor Lewis-Smith, heard in phone prank call mode at the start of a choice track from ambient figureheads The Orb's 1992 crossover hit album. Ending this List, as Victor did many of his own programmes, with the Associated-Rediffusion adastral star logo and jingle, would have been a nice touch. I'm not quite that good, though.

***

(The only smashing pumpkins you'll ever find in this blog. Pictures taken on 31/10/2020 are author's own)

There's no Halloween special this year, incidentally, despite this List having fallen on the very date. However, do please enjoy the one previous TML Does Halloween in the archive (List #214 dating back to 2016), dusted down and with newly fixed links.

The nearest thing to a concession to the season this week is actually the Trembling Blue Stars track - "These are haunted days / bonfire scented autumn days"... indeed so.

J xx

Click on the video or link to play each tune (links last checked as all working 29/10/2026).
Click here for a glossary explaining TML features.
Click here for a directory of updated older Lists.

DOG UNIT - Tiny Diversions (2026)

THE COURETTES - Too Late To Say I’m Sorry (2019)

RON SEXSMITH - Clown in Broad Daylight (1997)

GELLI HAHA - Funny Music (2025)

I LOVE POP MUSIC AND I WILL FIGHT YOU
ABC - Singer Not The Song (2016)

THEN AND NOW: Mylène Farmer
MYLÈNE FARMER - C'est à qui le tour (2026)
MYLÈNE FARMER - Désenchantée (1991)

THE SUNBATHERS - Devotion (2026)

TREMBLING BLUE STARS - Haunted Days (2001)

BETTE DAVIS & THE BALCONETTES – White Food (1997)

YOUNG KNIVES - She’s Attracted to (2006)

A SESSION OF SORTS: Darren Hayman
DARREN HAYMAN - I’m Your Team (2026)
DARREN HAYMAN AND THE LONG PARLIAMENT - I Don’t Want to Get Used to It (2013)

(No video for I Don't Want to Get Used to It - please use this Bandcamp link)

IF WE DO, WE’LL KEEP IT ALIVE
COMMON OR GARDEN - Bought (2019)

BJÖRK – Cvalda (2000)

THE SEWING CLUB - Complicated (2026)

LITTLE AXE - 15 to 4 (1993)

TENDER TRAP - Face of 73 (2002)

DAVE STEWART [EGG] AND COLIN BLUNSTONE - There Is No Reward (1980)

A SESSION OF SORTS: Darren Hayman
DARREN HAYMAN - Parliament Hill (2012)
DARREN HAYMAN AND EMMA KUPA - Outside Looking In (2014)

RAPPING SONGS
WARREN G - Regulate (1994)

DEXYS MIDNIGHT RUNNERS - Once a Man, Twice a Child (2026)

VERBENA - I Say So (1995)

OUMOU SANGARÉ - Wassulu Don (2022)

MOSES BOYD ft SHANTÉH - More to Life (2026)

IN LOVING MEMORY
GERRIT GRAHAM - Life at Last (1974)

THE LONG GOODBYE
THE ORB - Towers of Dub (1992)

Saturday, 24 October 2026

LIST 277 – 24/10/2026

(Sing to Bernard. Photo is author's own).

Hello again,

A bit of agile reprogramming required this week, for I was all set to feature Prolapse in the A Loved Album strand, only for them to release a brand new single in more immediate need of sharing. I'll give you a few weeks to guess which of the triumphantly reformed Leicester septet's longplayers would have featured, until it does.

Off the subs' bench, therefore, but always likely to have figured on here before the end of 2026 anyway, comes Sing to God, not just my favourite Cardiacs album of them all but my second favourite album of all time, runner-up to Skywriting and Skywriting only.

I'd have given you astronomically long odds on me ever taking Tim Smith and company so much to heart the first time I ever heard them, however.

That would have been when borrowing Beechwood Music's CD88 - as the name might suggest, a CD-based accompaniment to their hitherto largely cassette- and LP-driven Indie Top 20 compilation series - from my local music library a couple of years after its release.

I've spoken before since TML came back about my deep love of those compilations, or music show programming, which provide variety; but in the case of Cardiacs' 1988 indie chart smash and proper chart almost-hit Is This the Life, the proximity to other things - none of which it sounded very much anything like - on the same piece of plastic proved curse rather than blessing.

Next to CD88's smattering of the sort of jangly indiepop of the present and recent past which I was consuming voraciously by then (The Wedding Present, Chesterf!elds), the electronic/rock crossovers of PWEI and The Shamen, the relative humour of Half Man Half Biscuit and Ciccone Youth, and even the haunting African-American a cappella of Sweet Honey in the Rock, Is This the Life just seemed... leaden. A piece of competent but ultimately pedestrian work with some of the stylings of The Chameleons (a band I would ultimately take even longer to warm to) but a dollop of rock excess on top in the form of that bloody guitar solo.

There was probably a small element of peer influence at play from one or two school contemporaries who were no more impressed by the track and said as much, along with that pre-internet era staple of Misinformation By Some Kid Who Heard Something Somewhere, in this case one fairly persuasively perpetuating the myth that Cardiacs was a vanity project of the same Tim Smith who presented the pre-breakfast show on BBC Radio 1 at the time (so was to be derided accordingly).

With airplay of Cardiacs somewhere between limited and nonexistent in the shows and on the stations I was mostly listening to at the start of the 1990s (for one, Peel producer John Walters' dislike of them is a matter of record), I neither gave nor had cause to give them much more thought thereafter until serendipitously catching Day is Gone, the first released fruits of Cardiacs' move from the "classic" line-up to the power quartet, on a Radio 1 evening programme - almost certainly one of Mark Radcliffe's, probably early in 1992.

If not an epiphany as such, the restless five-four time signature and that swallow-dive of what counts as a chorus (organ ripples and all) caused Day is Gone to land with me far more effectively than Is This the Life. Hmm, this is actually good. Is there anything else new on the way?

There should have been, of course, but Rough Trade's imminent collapse, taking Day is Gone's parent album Heaven Born and Ever Bright with it for a while, essentially cost myself and radio much chance to enjoy it. Again, Cardiacs left my consciousness for a while with nothing further to show for it.

...Until April 24th 1995. A Cardiacs session for Mark Radcliffe, happened across less serendipitously this time as his Radio 1 night show had become prescribed listening for me by then, but at the same time not the session I was looking for the most even that week, if memory serves.

Then they opened with Day is Gone b-side Ideal.

From my bedroom in a house in Saddleworth, the clang of scales falling from eyes was probably audible across the other side of the Pennines.

Fast, agile, inventive, manic. The rises and builds in the chorus. More ideas in a single song than some bands conceive in a lifetime. Oh, this will do.

Mark announced it's Is This the Life next up. I deflated slightly, but decided that Ideal has bought Cardiacs five minutes or so during which I'll sit sweetly and tolerate it.

Ha ha. A bit of titting around with the opening riff from Pretty Vacant, before Bob Leith crashed on the drums, that enormous guitar motif kicked in for the first time, and I was strapped to the front of the tank. A rendition basically structurally unchanged from the studio version I'd first sniffed at on CD88, but in its live, visceral incarnation, it was completely and utterly convincing. I didn't want the thing to stop. Not even that guitar solo. Especially not that guitar solo. A track rehabilitated in my thinking like none before and few since.

And then A Horses Tail. Good God. A genuine thunderclap moment. All of the creativity, excitement and clench-teethed mania of Ideal, ramped up exponentially by the barrage of time and key signature handbrake turns which couldn't work, shouldn't work, yet without exception did.

Heck, this was attention deficiency in musical form. My attention deficiency. To this day I've zero idea whether Tim Smith had any neurodiverse traits, or identified as having such. Regardless, he and the band had created a music which made be feel seen.

Thirty-one years on, A Horses Tail remains one of the most exciting and personally resonant pieces of music I've ever absorbed; and for when I came across it, and how it turned me so firmly on to the music of its performers, I doubt I'll ever not regard it as my favourite Cardiacs track. Needless to say, there followed some immediate admonishing of myself for not taping that session version (for taping it was back then).

The closer Joining the Plankton almost felt a little anticlimactic after that, as anything would, but on its own terms I still enjoyed it, the stomp of The Troggs' Wild Thing sort of reimagined as fairground punk.

(Representing in my Little House... design long-sleeved t-shirt, which I must have owned for about a quarter of a century now. It's certainly got a lot more thin and worn in the meantime, as has the wearer. Selfie taken on 14/09/2015, the date of that year's Band T-Shirt Day on BBC Radio 6 Music, and the right side of many chins, grey hairs and wrinkles).

Ever heard a radio session which affected you so profoundly? I expect many of us have. This was certainly mine. The enthusiasm for indiepop, good chart pop and everything else remained thereafter. The burgeoning interest in stuff like darkwave and gabber was not derailed. But alongside all of those categories, there was now this harder to categorise music to enthuse over simultaneously.

Cut to mid-late summer 1996. Newly back in the country after a year working in Germany, missing a further Radcliffe session as a result but finding a copy of Cardiacs' Sampler in a CD bin in a Karstadt partway through (and playing it almost to the point of wearing it out). I don't believe I was back in the country a week before shelling out for Sing to God, released in mid-June with all well in Cardiacs' world from a marketing and distro perspective once more.

Such reviews as the then Britpop-crazed music press had deigned to perform I roundly dismissed. Zero out of ten from Vox was obviously just silly, an affirmation of the reviewer's prejudices more than anything else.

All that said, the opening few minutes of listening to Sing to God for the first time was not wholly enjoyable and re-raised historic doubts - the tentative hymnal opener Eden on the Air rather seemed to dribble out of the speakers to me, and Eat It Up Worms Hero sounded like the abrupt turns of A Horses Tail done all wrong, the constituent parts just not gelling in the same way.

That, though, was as bad as it got. I maintain to the hilt even now that two of Sing to God's four weakest tracks are the first two (of the others later on, Billion is barely a doodle, whilst Quiet as a Mouse is hard to determine the purpose of), but third track Dog-Like Sparky hauled me back on track, and still does every time. Irreverent, confident, stompy, quite possibly blasphemous and super exciting.

The section from around 2:23 to 2:53 never, ever fails to elicit a giddy thrill, being the aural equivalent of being fired around a pinball machine with - just for good measure - what comes over as a snatch of a musical chorus line waiting to serenade you for about 23 seconds right after that.

The rush of Dog-Like Sparky doesn't let up again immediately after that, following track Fiery Gun Hand being as insatiable, direct and pounding as Cardiacs get. Thereafter, however, Sing to God does give way periodically to better directed moments of beauty and tenderness than the opener and better aimed manic moments than Eat It Up... An album with a run time of 88 minutes, and anywhere up to 80 of those I'd regard as indispensable.

That all being the case, it might make you wonder how on earth I've got to 277 editions of That Music List without doing a deeper dive of Sing to God before now, let alone included just two tracks from it - Fiery Gun Hand and Angleworm Angel - on any previous List. Extreme self-discipline, I'd have to say!

The A Loved Album feature doesn't usually include more than four tracks from a work, and nor will this, for all that I could happily include almost anything of what remains.

In the event, I've had to go for A Horses Tail and Dog-Like Sparky, for their place in the story of me and Cardiacs; Bell Clinks, as an acknowledgement of Ad Nauseum/Panixphere recruit Jon Poole's appreciable contribution to the sound and direction of the band at the time; and the beautiful quasi-shanty-cum-orchestral-piece Wireless, as the only one of Sing to God's trio of most extended pieces still not quite long enough to qualify for The Long Goodbye in a future List (hopefully that will save me a lynching from those fans wondering how I couldn't possibly include regular best ever Cardiacs track poll winner, the nine-minute Dirty Boy today - it'll be included in that feature on here some day, promise).

The final motivation for including Sing to God in A Loved Album at around this time of year lies in the fact that it is, give or take a few days, 30 years since I first experienced Cardiacs live.

Manchester Roadhouse would of course count as a far smaller scale venue than the Albert Hall a stone's throw away, into which the faithful crammed back in March of this year for a chance to see the band which not all of us honestly thought we'd get even not all that long ago. For where the band was in late 1996, however, profile having not been sent through the ceiling by any of Sing to God's release, the tour dates with Chumbawamba or the tough experience at Blur's Mile End brouhaha sixteen months prior, it felt about right.

And seeing Tim up close and personal for the first time, demanding we make hissing noises instead of cheering, join him in berating Jim and check a birthday boy in the audience for evidence of squirrel feet (poor Alistair), was as unforgettable as the music. A night I'll treasure always.

(What four quid got you in the mid-1990s. Cardiacs ticket, replete with surplus "The", from author's own collection).

***

I've not got anywhere near as much to say on the rest of this week's choices, you'll be relieved to learn.

However, following the piece the other week concerning Carter USM's rather clumsy dig at Terence Trent D'Arby on a career-compromising single, I was motivated to check whether the latter's extraordinary one-off as The Incredible E.G. O'Reilly had ever featured on That Music List - it hadn't.

I'm not unsympathetic to the suggestions (some of them Sananda's own) that he never wore his ability - genius, even? - too lightly, and there's an overriding sense when listening to The Birth of Maudie that he's trying to show off every musical genre trick he knows, all set to the waltz time signature that barely anybody uses in pop anymore.

The thing is, though, the cocky sod absolutely nailed it here, a track not included on the sophomore Trent D'Arby album Neither Fish Nor Flesh released just a few weeks later in October 1989, but one I enjoy more than anything on there.

Other highlights among many this week include:

Further new or recent stuff from Fujiya & Miyagi, Gentle Hen, Olivia Rodrigo, Mia Joy ft Peel Dream Magazine, Hibbett & Christopher (a hook-up with its roots in such tracks as Literature Search from MJ Hibbett's undeservedly underappreciated indiepop concept album Dinosaur Planet) and Eli Wewentxu & Indrė Jurgelevičiūtė (the last pair a stirring yet delicate continent-straddling collaboration between artists from Mexico and Lithuania respectively).

A trip back to 1975 for some peak Caravan, I suppose one of the two real survivors to the present day from the Canterbury Scene alumni, along with Gong.

The first blast of The Pipettes since this blog returned. It's actually nice to see and hear Gwenno Saunders still talk relatively fondly of this formative stage of her career, however markedly different stylistically and conceptually it might be to her less straightforwardly poppy and occasionally haunting Welsh/Cornish solo output. Me? I like it all.

A reminder of the gifts of New Fast Automatic Daffodils, to my mind more interesting than practically any of the other contemporaneous Manchester bands to gain greater commercial traction as the 1980s became the 1990s. More funky, more edgy, more cryptic, more intelligent.

A few weeks on now from the sad passing of Catherine Ringer, here's a chance to enjoy another helping of her and Fred Chichin's exemplary art pop as Les Rita Mitsouko. Increasingly as I get older, I find myself enjoying more and more French pop music for the very reason I didn't forty years ago, more prepared as I am to let something reveal its charms and intricacies instead gradually over repeated listens. This silly kid would likely have loathed Andy on its original release, along with so much else I now hold dear such as... oh, plucking a name from the clouds, Cardiacs....

J xx

Click on the video or link to play each tune (links last checked as all working 23/10/2026).
Click here for a glossary explaining TML features.
Click here for a directory of updated older Lists.

FUJIYA & MIYAGI - No Green Light (2026)

DUBSTAR – Anywhere (1995)

GITHEAD - Wallpaper (2005)

TODD TERJE – Inspector Norse (2012)

EUROTASTIC
TWENTY 4 SEVEN - I Can't Stand It (original) (1990)

A LOVED ALBUM: Cardiacs - Sing to God (1996)
CARDIACS - Dog-Like Sparky
CARDIACS - Bell Clinks

ST CHRISTOPHER - Dark (1991)

PROLAPSE - A Place for Lyres (2026)

JAMES YUILL - No Surprise (2007)

CARAVAN - The Show of Our Lives (1975)

A TANGLE OF JANGLE
GENTLE HEN - Comfort Zone (2026)
TIP TOP PLANETS - Go Go Pepper (1995)
BRIGHTER - Half-Hearted (1992)

I LOVE POP MUSIC AND I WILL FIGHT YOU
OLIVIA RODRIGO - Expectations (2026)

HEINOUS ORCA - Wishing Well (2019)

EMPRESS - I Am Not Cut Out for This (1998)

THE PIPETTES - Who Made You the Doctor? (2010)

MIA JOY ft PEEL DREAM MAGAZINE - Comet (2026)

COMPILED BY CHET & BEE (AND SOMETIMES TIM)
NEW FAST AUTOMATIC DAFFODILS - Get Better (Version I) (1991)

A LOVED ALBUM: Cardiacs - Sing to God (1996)
CARDIACS - A Horses Tail
CARDIACS - Wireless

HIBBETT & CHRISTOPHER - When You Hear a Bird (2026)

SUEP - Misery (2021)

THE INCREDIBLE E.G. O’REILLY - The Birth of Maudie (1989)

ELI WEWENTXU & INDRĖ JURGELEVIČIŪTĖ - Cuerpos de agua (lyja) (2026)

IN LOVING MEMORY: Catherine Ringer
LES RITA MITSOUKO - Andy (1986)

IF WE DO, WE’LL KEEP IT ALIVE
CARS CAN BE BLUE - Lie (2013)

Saturday, 17 October 2026

LIST 276 - 17/10/2026

Hello again,

One of the many, many lovely things about indiepop is how it reminds one that not all performers of a pensionable age are libidinous, seedy gits or embittered racists (or both) cynically trotting out exactly the same sets of decades-old fodder year after year.

Hence Would-Be-Goods and Railcard's matinee gig in Sheffield last Saturday afternoon. Every member of each band older than this fiftysomething, yet still creating new, beautiful art as vital as anything from their various storied careers.

Indeed, Railcard has only existed since 2025, so all of their imaginative, sometimes motorik take on indiepop (elevated further by Allison Thomson's swirling brass) is by definition new product. 2026 will not pass without Unstable Neighbour featuring somewhere in my top ten songs of the year. Maybe even top five.

Forty-six years on from debut single Baby It's You, and nearly as many since their days of larking about with Captain Sensible on videos and TOTP, what a fine thing it is to have seen two-thirds of Dolly Mixture - Debsey Wykes with Saint Etienne, Rachel Love fronting Railcard - in active service at gigs in the past four months. Over to you, Hester Smith.

Would-Be-Goods have always been one of the more elegant, literate and often darkly humourous indiepop acts of their respective, successive eras, and a choice selection of Jessica Griffin's delicious bon mots was served up on this, the band's first ever gig in Sheffield.

And served up in Jessica's "BBC accent", as they have evidently taken to calling it on their own Facebook presence; though as more regional twangs have worked their way in amongst those heard on Radio 4 latterly, perhaps the Received Pronuciation description of yore remains the more accurate. Either way, there is nothing remotely affectated, incongruous or jarring about it. Jessica's voice suits her words handsomely, and always has.

It was impossible not to note Jessica's knowing smiles during a perfect rendition of 2004 quickie Too Old, nor to hear the chuckles back from that portion of the audience of a comparable vintage to the band, perhaps recognising something about themselves in there.

Not that those of us present had come solely to respond to Would-Be-Goods' back catalogue; I doubt I'm alone in having loved the likes of Madame X, Dr Love and The Gallopers as much as any of the Él Records era cuts given an airing this afternoon.

Road closures and queues associated with Sheffield Utd's match virtually next door ensured I failed to get to Sidney and Matilda in time to see opening act Mudguard, Ivy and Dora Pursey by any other name.

A shame, but as demonstrated by the rest of the afternoon (and indeed the example of Ivy and Dora's none more famous parents), the precedent is there for an indiepop career of such longevity that I look forward to watching them also still doing this four decades hence. I'll likely be a head in a jar by then, but still a nodding away tastefully to indiepop in that jar sort of head.

***

Would-Be-Goods and Railcard both deservedly earn themselves another run-out in this week's List, alongside other new or at least halfway recent material from Warrington-Runcorn New Town Development Plan, Freak Slug, Caroline Rose, MAQUINA. and The Sweetest Ache.

File the first-named as yet another act whose first appearance here would not have been left as late as this week had TML not gone on hiatus for nearly eight years. Gordon Chapman-Fox's restlessly prolific output as Warrington-Runcorn New Town Development Plan has taken in seven albums since 2021 already, with number eight Industrial Growth due out at the end of this month.

Still unmistakably, recognisably Warrington-Runcorn, if This Machine suggests a perceptible change of direction to long-term fans of the project, it's definitely by design. Gordon notes on the Bandcamp write-up for the forthcoming album listening party that this is a heavier work, a visceral response to darker times in the world right now.

Formerly a veteran of rock and grindcore bands in and around the Wigan area, Gordon's switch to ambient, synthwave, sometimes experimental electronic music was influenced in part by listening to the output of such as Warp Records and noting its capacity to be at least as brutal and extreme as anything pounded out of a loud guitar.

I wouldn't have to look far into my own collection to find other material which backs that assertion to the hilt (from Felix Kubin to many of the releases by the Tigerbeat6 label); and if the lead single is any indicator, Industrial Growth stands an excellent chance of proving Gordon right yet further.

Without giving too much away, the promotional video ultimately finds Gordon in a predicament that even calling Eileen Bilton on 39591 won't help with. If you know, you know...

(Seen in Liverpool on 20/03/2018, a trip back home to Runcorn - not via Warrington, alas - awaits for YX12 GGO, an AlexanderDennis Enviro200 integral single decker. Halton Transport was one of the last surviving municipal bus companies in Britain, serving Runcorn and Widnes before going into liquidation at the start of 2020. Of the few remaining examples, the nearest to Runcorn now is... Warrington. Picture is the author's own)

Based many hundreds of miles away from Warrington or Runcorn, but seen in the north west of England not so many weeks ago, Lisbon three-piece MAQUINA. were the finds of this year's Manchester Psych Fest, according to the very lovely Joel, Steve and Izabela of Sheffield Live's The Breakdown weekly new music feast.

They certainly sold them to me in a chat a few weeks ago now. Guitars treated to sound as much like anything other than guitars has long worked for me, to the extent of maintaining a personal measuring system of Quiques, named after the 1993 Seefeel album which bent guitar sounds at least as far out of shape as My Bloody Valentine's Loveless, if not more so.

On a scale of one to ten Quiques, where 1 is acoustic guitar fragility and 10 is Imperial off of Quique itself (qv. List #274), it sounds as if MAQUINA. can manage about a high 8 live. Whether or not the studio equivalents manage the feat so effectively, the Body Transmission album is nevertheless still a tremendous slab of pounding, motorik, rocky noise, wholly deserving of your time.

If MAQUINA. remind me of anything, it would be dance-metal pioneers Cubanate, an act whom the rock circles they frequented didn't always appear to know what to make of. Kerrang! would award them Single of the Week garlands. Interactions with Bruce Dickinson in his then Radio One Rock Show hosting capacity would be strained or antagonistic. Carcass fans would just want to kick confrontational, extrovert singer Marc Heal's head in.

Either way, feel free to perform your own compare and contrast between Agony and Oxyacetylene, the latter additionally another staple of my mid-1990s German darkwave/industrial club-going days. Nobody there seemed to mind it being played.

***

One of the joys of compiling That Music List is permitting myself complete stylistic about-turns from one track to the next if I so choose. Believe it or not, however, it's something I agonised over doing for years when younger.

Which actually makes for the better experience - keeping stylistically broadly similar tracks together to achieve the smooth flow of many compilations, from Now That's What I Call Music through to Indie Top 20; or the switches (carefully curated and chosen switches, nonetheless) from one genre to another to another that one might have expected of a typical John Peel show or a 1981 episode of Top of the Pops (the best, most anything-goes year of chart pop ever, and I won't hear otherwise)?

I think somewhere along the line I decided that neither approach was necessarily wrong, but that a gradual flow suits a physical compilation best and a genre-hopping approach is better for radio or online. I am certainly happy for you all to discuss that in the comments either here or on That Music List's Facebook presence (newly reactivated after an even longer hiatus than the blog itself).

All of which is a possibly unnecessarily long way of saying that the rock-metal of Cubanate is followed this week by the none gentler sound of The Sweetest Ache, with impunity.

If this indiepop act from Swansea (an actual Swansea Sound, you could say) could never quite find a way to command a place at the top table of my absolute favourite Sarah Records bands first time around, that speaks more about the incredible competition for my attention offered up by that label's many-tentacled roster as 1990 became 1991.

The first two The Sweetest Ache singles - Sarahs 36 and 39 - were flanked numerically, and roughly chronologically also, on one side by The Sea Urchins, St Christopher and Another Sunny Day, on the other side by The Springfields, Heavenly and The Orchids, and in between by Even As We Speak and So Said Kay by The Field Mice.

It was hard to be heard, or more accurately heard enough, among all of those; and that's before factoring in any albums and compilations released around then, too.

The passing of time has given their Sarah output space to breathe and find the higher level of appreciation it deserves (from me and others), a process given further momentum by the release of a retrospective collection on Daydream Records last year and a gradual return to the live sphere.

Hence, ultimately, Reframed, a first album in 33 years slated for release on November 9th (the weekend after an appearance at the Malaga Popfest) and - as if to reinforce the points about collaborative label releases made last week - put out simultaneously in different territories by Shelflife, Old Bad Habits, Fastcut and Windmill Records, the last-named being the imprint of Chris Mabbs and Neil Shumsky (variously All Ashore!, Velodrome 2000, Plouf!, Bouquet, etc.) and itself inactive for 34 years until last year.

Expect Sarah era tracks repurposed acoustically. Expect also the likes of the gorgeous brand new track Speak to Me, delivered with all of the born-again joy and freedom of a band palpably delighted to have once again found its audience, and acquired some more, after so long away.

I look forward to reading up about their current and future plans when edition #4 of Jane Duffus's Zine Things Happen hits the doormat in the coming days, and to seeing them in action (for what would be my first time) should the present whispers of a Sheffield date in January be proved correct.

Not to labour a point, but the assertion of a few years back that Sarah Records is over is seeming wider of the mark with every passing month of 2026, isn't it?

***

That feels like quite enough of my blether and prattle for one week, I think. Suffice it to say, other highlights of this week's selection include, but are no means limited to, the following:

Four choices from Dystopia by Midnight Juggernauts (2007), this week's A Loved Album. There was a time in the 2000s and into the start of the 2010 when it felt as if Midnight Juggernauts and The Presets were taking it in turns to try to win the vote as my favourite Australian electronic act. The more inclined of the two to drop in a bit of guitar, the Melbourne trio appear to have ground to a halt a decade or so ago (Andrew Szekeres instead keeping himself busy occasionally working with The Avalanches), but their thumping good set in the woods at Latitude in 2008 won't be leaving my memory any time soon.

A track from an imprecise date some time between 1979 and 1981 by experimental Sheffield duo Mein Glasfabrik. I wonder how many people would take your word for it if you'd told them it was a Boards of Canada outtake; the way it anticipates the enigmatic Scottish duo's sound and atmosphere by a generation is really quite something.

Altogether less mysterious and far poppier, My Forgotten 80s this week comprises a track from the late Robert Allen, better known to fellow Basildon Set scenesters as Robert Marlow. Seemingly positioned to become the next breakout star from that social stratum after Alison Moyet, Vince Clarke and Martin L. Gore (all of whom he was in bands with previously), the Clarke co-produced I Just Want to Dance was the second of four ultimately non-hit singles but the one I seem to remember Radio One briefly getting behind the most. Copies of his sole album The Peter Pan Effect, unreleased until 1999 (sixteen years after this single), are still findable, for those keenest to discover whether Robert was a should have been star largely lost to time.

J xx

Click on the video or link to play each tune (links last checked as all working 16/10/2026).
Click here for a glossary explaining TML features.
Click here for a directory of updated older Lists.

WARRINGTON-RUNCORN NEW TOWN DEVELOPMENT PLAN - This Machine (2026)